I don’t mean to argue but… where does that link show that 50% of spending is government spending?

What I see there is: Medicare 21% and Medicaid 18%, which sum to 39%.

If we apply that 39% to this country comparison chart, the US goes to the bottom of the list.

The real point here is that the US spends more for less. I just wouldn’t phrase it as “the US government” next time because, even if what you just said were correct, you’d be undercutting your point by half if you focused on the government.

That was genuinely pulled out of my ass. Not a benchmark comparison. It’s just my perception that cards only get incrementally better each year, but “this year’s card” is always proportionally much more expensive for what you get. Few games actually demand the very latest and greatest, so I don’t know why people would ever pay the premium for the latest and greatest.

You’re saying that all backlit LCDs are projectors?

Sometimes a product winds up in late-stage enshittification before its sector is fully developed. Just as the thing it does is beginning to fully explode, it begins to aggressively harvest its brand value. They miss the big wave, and everyone asks what happened. That’s one disadvantage in moving early. You also hit enshittification early.

Fuck him for taking anything from Tolkien’s legacy for his evil fucking purposes.

For years now the prices on this year’s latest cards are so high that I don’t know who buys them. I can afford to spend $1000 but I never would when I can probably get 85% of the performance for $250.

I’m wondering if he spent days unconscious after some cardiac event, before finally dying.

No. Just scroll up and down that page I linked and you’ll see some charts are labeled “national spending” and some are labeled “federal spending.” Federal is government. National is everything: government and private. The US government is not pouring 20% of GDP into healthcare, and then on top of that there’s all private spending.

I have only one correction and it’s a small one. The US spends more on healthcare but that spending isn’t all by the US government. Your main point still stands. The system sucks.

More on this:

In 2022, the United States spent an estimated $12,742 per person on healthcare — the highest healthcare costs per capita across similar countries.

Healthcare spending is driven by utilization (the number of services used) and price (the amount charged per service). An increase in either of those factors can result in higher healthcare costs. Despite spending nearly twice as much on healthcare per capita, utilization rates in the United States do not differ significantly from other wealthy OECD countries. Prices, therefore, appear to be the main driver of the cost difference between the United States and other wealthy countries.

There are many possible factors for why healthcare prices in the United States are higher than other countries, ranging from the consolidation of hospitals — leading to a lack of competition — to the inefficiencies and administrative waste that derive from the complexity of the U.S. healthcare system. In fact, the United States spends over $1,000 per person on administrative costs — almost five times more than the average of other wealthy countries and more than it spends on long-term healthcare.

Source

Even though it was all dire news it was uplifting to just hear the actual truth and a clear moral direction articulated. I found it very refreshing. The bullshit is so THICK right now.

I hear that. I took those comments in a couple of ways:

1. he is at least to some degree describing real things that are happening
2. more so, I took it as an expression of faith that America has deep reserves of reason and dignity which are not exhausted yet
3. it was also a subtle cue to those of us who think we’re part of those reserves to get off our asses

Guy should really move on.

We’re arguing about whether music videos are videos and therefore there will be ads on videos… Here’s what the article says. Pretty straightforward.

With YouTube Lite, customers will be able to watch videos across verticals like gaming, fashion, beauty, cooking, news, and more, ad-free, but will be shown ads on music content and music videos.

My YT usage includes exactly zero anything related to music, so this seems relevant for me.

The vibe there is infuckingsufferable. Corporate bootlicking, performative workaholism, and the butt-ugliest “influencers” of all platforms.

I think this headline makes it sound overly simple. Just shutter those 36 companies and we save the world, right? Well, the fossil fuels they vend go on to become the fuel and household products made and sold by thousands of other companies and those are relied upon by all of us all day every day. There’s no single-point fix here. We can’t depend on these monsters AND point the finger at them. A great deal needs to change before we can live without them.

You are 100% correct. They knowingly doubled down on him. They can all ride his coattails straight to hell.

Sky daddy issues.